Letter: Clean up the air before the Olympics

Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2030? Fantastic.

The eyes of the world will be on us, and it will be a great opportunity to showcase our state.

However, what will visitors think as they fly into the beautiful new Salt Lake International Airport and are unable to see our city through the smog? How embarrassing will it be when the TV cameras show a city looking more like Beijing than the beautiful valley and mountains that viewers expected?

Simply hoping there will not be a pollution-trapping inversion in February 2030 is not a good plan. Now is the time to start taking steps to reduce the emissions that are the source of the smog and that threaten the health of our children and our long-term economic viability.

There are steps each of us can take to reduce smog-producing emissions but, ultimately, we have to look to our business and legislative leaders at the city, state and national levels to take action now if we want to see cleaner air in 2030.

At the state level, a tax on carbon pollution — with an equal decrease in other taxes, such as the grocery tax — and a massive push for clean energy could be a good first step.

Imagine how great it would be during the 2030 Games if viewers and visitors don’t see a brown blanket of smog but instead we are held up as an example to the world for the steps we took in 2019 to decrease pollution and clean the air.

Robert T. Peterson, South Jordan

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from The Salt Lake Tribune http://bit.ly/2GNiHpo

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